Evidence of meeting #4 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was election.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
Corey Tochor Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Democracy is expensive, but it's very valuable.
Thank you for all of the work that you're doing. I appreciate it.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Thank you, Monsieur Perrault and Monsieur Tochor.
Next up is Dr. Duncan, for five minutes, please.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Perrault, thank you so much. You're so gracious with your time this morning.
I'm very worried about schools, like you are, and ensuring the health and safety of our children. On e-day this Monday, can you confirm that no schools are being used?
12:10 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
No schools are being used. Even if we wanted to, they would not allow us near the school.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Thank you. I'm really relieved to hear that.
The question I would have next is, how are you coping with getting locations?
12:10 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
We are finding alternative locations that are not necessarily usual locations, like ballrooms—that's an example. I think earlier there was a discussion about some places being closed. You can't rent a ballroom to organize a wedding in Toronto right now, but we can rent those same places to organize an election. We've had coordination between the landlords and the public health authorities so that they are reassured we can get access to those places to hold the election. We're using community centres quite a bit—these types of locations—and some private hotel locations.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Thank you.
You mentioned contact tracing. Testing, contact tracing and isolation are keys to keeping people healthy and safe.
In some areas, contact tracing is suspended. How are you dealing with that? If people are signing in, showing that they've been there, and contact tracing is suspended, how do we ensure the health and safety of the people?
12:10 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I think I have to manage expectations here. We can collect information and make it available to the local health authorities, but contact tracing is a health matter. It's not something that our poll workers can do at the same time as running an election.
We'll be very clear with each local health authority as we begin the election that we can do our part by collecting the information and making it available quickly, but we do not have the capacity to then pursue the contacting. We could do some messaging on our website and we could do some local generic messaging, but individual contacting is a different matter.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Oh, that's very much a public health issue; I just wanted to raise the issue that in some locations contact tracing is halted. I think that's important to note.
The last question I would ask is that we have some pandemic hot spots in the country, certainly Toronto, Ottawa, Peel, for example, but within those hot spots, there are areas that are even more vulnerable. Where you have high-density housing, you might have multi-generational...there are communities that are more at risk. There's a testing rate for the city, but in some communities that testing rate of positive cases is going to be much higher.
How do we ensure that the people in these communities stay healthy and safe during an election, as well as being able to exercise their right to vote?
12:10 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I think the solution there, apart from local knowledge and local contact, is offering a range of voting options. For those electors who are vulnerable, those electors who either have COVID or are at risk of having COVID because of where they are and who they've interacted with, it's to reinforce the importance of alternative voting options, such as mail-in ballots.
We have messages to reinforce that, to make sure that electors have a range of options to vote in a way that is safe.
12:10 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Thank you.
I'm going to ask, then, how do you ensure in communities where there are multiple languages, and in communities where there is a high percentage of first-generation families, they will have the information to exercise their right to vote during a pandemic?
12:15 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I think that's an excellent point.
We carry information on a broad range of languages. I don't have the specifics, but I'll be happy to provide that information to the committee on the different ways we communicate to the different ethnolinguistic groups in Canada. I'd be happy to provide more detail on that.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
I would ask that you do table that with the committee.
With that, I will say thank you.
12:15 p.m.
Bloc
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Perrault, I'm going to come back to what you said earlier, that you don't give IQ tests to voters. That wasn't the point of my comment at all. I was a member of Parliament in Quebec City, and when we were drawing up electoral lists, we took great care to consider people who were unfit because of significant cognitive problems. We made sure that they were not on the electoral list.
Do you also do this?
12:15 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
The criteria for incapacity were declared unconstitutional a long time ago and are no longer in the Canada Elections Act. Therefore, there are no criteria for incapacity in the act.
12:15 p.m.
Bloc
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
I see. So, if I were in a CHSLD and if I were mentally lost, you would allow me to vote by mail. You know what I mean. It's very sad, but it's a reality. There are whole floors of patients in this state.
12:15 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
The act provides a mechanism for voting, whether or not we are in a pandemic context. In long-term care facilities, voting is usually done in mobile polls. When people are bedridden, they go from bed to bed to collect ballots.
In the context of a pandemic, the way ballots are delivered will change. These people have the opportunity to vote and they are not tested. The law is very clear on this.
12:15 p.m.
Bloc
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
Fine. I just want to know.
This means that an attendant could be responsible for picking up the ballots, as you suggested earlier. He or she could distribute letters to these people, fill them out and send them to Elections Canada.
12:15 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
The attendant would assist in completing the application forms, as you say. Kits would be sent to the voter, and the voter would have to complete the ballot. There are provisions for assistance for an elector who has difficulty completing the ballot and returning it.
This is the legal regime that Parliament has adopted and that has always been applied; it is not new.
12:15 p.m.
Bloc
Alain Therrien Bloc La Prairie, QC
I know that, but I'm sharing a concern with you.
If there are more mail-in ballots, there may be—I'm using the conditional here and I'm not pointing fingers at anyone—less certainty that these people are able to vote and that they are the ones who did. That means there would be a risk of fraud.
12:15 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
I would say to you that these risks are not greater in the current context.
The people you have in mind already vote with assistance. So it's no different. What would be different this time is that people who are able to vote and carry out all the activities of their daily lives would choose to vote by mail because they would rather not go to a polling station. There will certainly be more people doing that.
12:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
That's all the time we have.
Thank you, Mr. Perrault.
I know that you were trying to respond to this question quite a few times, but we have gone over the time there.
Mr. Blaikie, you are next for two and a half minutes.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you.
Mr. Perrault, in your legislative proposal in your special report, there are some clauses around the coming into effect and the timing of the coming into effect, such that if these legislative proposals were passed and receive royal assent and an election were to happen within a certain time time frame of royal assent, these provisions would not apply.
I take it to mean that the start date of an election, therefore, is an integral part of the question of the proper conduct of a federal election. Is it a fair claim that it matters when the election starts for how you would proceed vis-à-vis the changes in rules that Parliament may make?